Teton Lunch Counter connects tourists, residents with locally sourced meals in Jackson Hole

After graduating from college, she moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where she lived for just over five years and went to school to get her Master’s in Sustainable Energy Engineering. While living overseas, she traveled as much as possible, with her tally of countries visited up to almost 30.

As often as possible during her travels, Parker would take cooking classes and eat as many varieties of foods as possible. After leaving South Africa, Parker spent several years adventuring throughout the Western United States, and three years ago, she settled in Wyoming with her partner, Max Pelosi.

Parker created Teton Lunch Counter after she saw a need for local guides to provide meals for their clients. Her motivation wasn’t solely to offer a service to local guides and tap into Wyoming’s profitable tourism industry, however. Parker wanted to find a way to connect the income in Wyoming that comes from the tourism industry with local farmers, while also finding ways to be environmentally friendly with her products.

“I wanted to ensure that we took the wealth and economy that comes from our tourism industry and found a way to apply it to everyone. I knew there had to be a way to buy local food and use it to create meals for our almost 4 million tourists visiting the area annually.”

Parker’s business plan is deceptively simple. Teton Lunch Counter (TLC) connects with local farmers and ranchers and purchases food. Healthy and flavorful lunches are served in reusable stainless steel Bento lunch box containers. The meals are delivered to the guides or individual customers, and upon completion, the team at TLC picks up the containers so they can be used again.

In the last two years, TLC has served more than 60,000 lunches to locals and tourists alike.

Parker researched what containers would be both durable and lightweight for her customers. The process of making and delivering 20 lunches for a single group of tourists can be complicated. However, Parker and her team clearly label each box with the customer’s name to make it easier for everyone to find their order. The real work and creativity happen when the TLC team comes up with menu items from seasonally sourced local food.

Finding menu items that are delicious, healthy and made with what can be grown locally in Wyoming’s notoriously harsh and short growing season can be challenging. Parker relies heavily on food storage and an ever-changing menu. In the summer, the menu tends to feature many flavors infused with herbs, leafy greens and vegetables that don’t store as well, like cucumbers. In the winter, the menus lean more toward hearty meals and root vegetables.

Parker explained that she has become a master at food storage: “I hyper-focus on making batches of food like pesto and sauces when we have fresh ingredients, and then we freeze them to be used during the winter.” Even TLC’s bread comes from a local Jackson Hole bakery.

Intense thought and research also went into what meals would pack well and taste delicious after hours spent in a backpack while customers hike, kayak or even ski in the wilds of Wyoming.

“When you design the sandwich structure, you think about what will be a barrier between the bread and the sauce so the sandwich isn’t soggy.” The stainless-steel container design also plays a big part in keeping the food fresh and edible after hours of being jostled.

It was essential to Parker to ensure that Teton Lunch Counter was also ecologically thoughtful. The reusable containers prevent paper and plastic waste from being left in the mountains or put into local landfills. Parker has customers leave all their food waste in their lunchboxes so that leftovers can be put into a compost pile that goes to the same farmers they purchase food from.

Teton Lunch Counter is proud to be an example of how a business can source products locally and be package- and waste-free.

Parker said she hopes that as her customers are sitting surrounded by Wyoming’s pristine beauty, eating a meal that was made locally with locally grown food that also has no plastic or waste, they realize “this is the Teton way” and think about how they can support the same type of work in their communities.

Currently, TLC has six full-time employees, and they work with 16 local guides. On May 20, Teton Lunch Counter will open a brick-and-mortar location at 175 S. Glenwood St, Unit 105.

Parker is excited to take this next step, and hopes that it will result in more demand for her services, which will, in turn, help the entire community. She acknowledged that there have been many unknowns and long days (and nights) over the last two years of developing and growing the Teton Lunch Counter, and she’s incredibly grateful for the local support she has had.

“It’s so fun and great to know that not only am I feeding people beautiful and delicious food, but I’m helping my local community and maybe teaching others about new ways to look at how they impact the environment around them.”